


sodom, south georgia

by elektra



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pre-Canon, Religious Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-18 14:36:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8165378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elektra/pseuds/elektra
Summary: God is good.





	

Gabriel dreams of rows and rows of hickory trees, all bushy and stout and unbreakable and like people he used to know, like people he used to try to be. It’s no nightmare, but he has a cascading realization of it being a dream and wanting to wake up from it -- knows he doesn’t register the real weight or texture of the leaves between his fingers, the crunch of empty nut shells under boots that it should be too hot to wear. He dreams, still, of the time he really had been there. A pair of borrowed sneakers that suffocated him at the ankle anyways and the audibly sizzling sun at a midday position, roasting the back of his neck.

_Used to grow corn before the crops were claimed by Agriculture. Then soybeans for a while. Then the trees started growing so we let ‘em._

Gabriel dreams of when he’d delicately picked a nut, rustled the hull off rather than cracking it, thinking it a lucky easy snack only to spit out the bitter, piecey meat of it. Laughter. Sweaty palm smoothing over his shoulders, leading him into a loose embrace. Feels wrong, sometimes, even in dreams. Feels like he’s too big for the gentle contact, too strange to not contrast. He’d leaned away from that kiss, not being able to bear it in dream or in reality, not in public, not with the trees and Civil War bullet casings watching.

It’d been alright, that he didn’t want to kiss in public all too often, until it wasn’t.

_It’s okay._

They had all the time in the world to kiss, later.

_I know you’re not ashamed of me._

Impossible. He was so proud. He was so happy.

_Are you ashamed of me?_

But then the words die in his throat and taste like bitter hickory nuts.

Gabriel also dreams of sleeping, of going off to dream, which is an odd blending of realities, swirling soap and water down a drain. Especially when he used to do it not alone. Knee to back of knee, breath against bristly half-shaved hair, hand on stomach, and back to chest. He tried to say his nightly prayer like that, but there was a striking dissonance between how and where he was doing it and what was preached. He feels hot all over, a fever gathering slick over his skin, but it’s with a flushed embarrassment, like he’s been caught sticking his hand in the cookie jar too soon after dinner. So he has to remove his hand. Move back a little.

 _Mmph?_ Not yet fully asleep.

_Nevermind._

His hand hovers while he finishes, _‘God is good.’_ and then returns, rubbing under a shirt hem, tentatively and sacredly, Corpus Christi. Kisses behind an ear in private. Kisses while an angel watches, but angels never bothered him before. He wonders if they tattle, about what they say. That horrifies him a little. That scares him a little, never thought of it before.

Gabriel dreams of when the rosary had been found, a bit of understanding with it in the same drawer. It’s not the attitude or the façade that needs to be maintained in public.

_I’ve got one too. Forget about it sometimes, if I’m being honest. It was never my thing._

Gabriel wishes he could agree, but it makes his stomach roll a bit, to deny that bit of himself, to put it in the metaphorical trash bin and click delete on the last vestiges of who he’d been years ago. Because Gabriel had always gone to church, and had always loved it. Gabriel loved to pray and loved to see it all come to, what he hoped was, fruition. Gabriel loved men, too. Men like the one who asked if he wanted to go to the non-denominational prayer space on base, jittery and awkward with the airy realization of why fists and block stances came easier than holding hands.

 _‘No. Thanks.’_ He liked whispering his pleas into private kisses behind ears and having angels look at it all and scoff and discount what he asked for -- to be made holier.

So when Gabriel is awake, morning breath bitter, alone in his bed and without angels, and when the space between them is jittery and awkward for all the years they’ve been bitter and alone and because there’s a new Strike Commander badge walking down the hallway,

Bitter _‘Congratulations.’_ wants to sound a lot more like _‘I’m so proud of you. I’m so happy. I want to kiss you in public.’_ than it has any right to.

**Author's Note:**

> can you tell this was venty and vaguely self-problem-inserty?
> 
> i'm stepping into writing for this fandom with this kind of trite and i'm immediately stepping out, very quickly.


End file.
